13 ms·

Chrome has something similar here: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chrome/renderer/media/flash_embed_rewrite.cc;l=10;drc=82b01954552a81

Chrome has something similar here: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chrome/renderer/media/flash_embed_rewrite.cc;l=10;drc=82b01954552a812c61cf7bea4709e1ab9ca82e58 https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:chr... We accept contributions from other sites (e.g., Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc) who wanted to replace their long tail of in the wild embeds prior to Flash removal.

simonsarris 4y ago
Thanks for your work, Dale. IMO this was good practice to keep the web running smoothly at the time. It is reminiscent of Windows 95's specific code to see if SimCity is running, and allocate memory differently if it was. > Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95. from: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii-chicken-and-egg-problems/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii...
- tantalor 4y ago
  Yeah why fix bugs when you can just enshrine the bug as a feature. Backwards compatibility like this is a mistake.
  - siva7 4y ago
    Nowadays yes, back then this was the more reasonable approach
  - yusyusyus 4y ago
    software distribution had a quite different model in that era.
  - TakeBlaster16 4y ago
    If you play a lot of SimCity on Windows 3.1, then you upgrade to Windows 95 and SimCity stops working, who are you going to blame?
    - mdaniel 4y ago
      I would have more sympathy for that if Windows 95 were just suddenly dropped out of the sky to some rock music, but my experience with MSDN is that they are quite liberal with access to beta versions so software vendors can test their products before the unwashed masses get it And I say this as someone who remembers the binders full of CDROMs that arrived, so not just "download this iso" modern day conveniences
      - rictic 4y ago
        You're arguing who is truly at fault, but as a consumer with less sophistication than "MSDN Subscriber" who are you going to blame when Win95 doesn't run your favorite software?
      - drdec 4y ago
        Let's say SimCity took advantage of this beta program and fixed their buggy software. Great! Now how do you get that fixed software to every user who bought a SimCity CD or floppies? Remember, most of your users don't have a modem and there is no widespread internet infrastructure at the time of the Windows 95 release.
      - hulitu 4y ago
        MSDN ? In windows 95 ?
  - ysavir 4y ago
    We're talking early 90s. Not only were automatic updates not a thing, manual updates were hardly thing. If Windows wanted SimCity to work on their new windows release, the only option was to make the new windows release work with SimCity, not the other way around.
    - Topgamer7 4y ago
      I remember the days of burning all sorts of updates for software to cd or DVD
      - tibbetts 4y ago
        I remember the days of going down to my friends store because he had a modem and knew which BBSes would have software downloads. I had to bring my own floppy disk because those things cost money.
    - nix23 4y ago
      But then why not let windows patch simcity, instead of changing the system, just asking.
      - anaisbetts 4y ago
        The hack being described was very very old, this is exactly what the AppCompat system does in Windows now. AppCompat shims only apply to specific versions of specific apps (or get rolled up into "layers" which is what you get when you mark an app to "Run under XP compatibility"), and don't end up affecting other ones
        nix23 4y ago
        Thanks for then explanation!!
        markemer 4y ago
        Yep. It’s just the first version of AppCompat. Now you get to pick a set of bugs and behaviors. It’s actually a pretty great idea to isolate problematic software.
  - thought_alarm 4y ago
    A-list apps have always received special treatment. MacOS and Windows are both full of app-specific hacks to ensure that misbehaving but popular apps continue to work between system versions.
    - azinman2 4y ago
      Correct. And not even always only A list.
  - bigyikes 4y ago
    What you call a “mistake” is actually just having empathy for the user. User experience is king. It’s not tech debt, it’s a feature.
    - tcmb 4y ago
      I agree that it's empathy for the user, but I'd say it's a workaround, and as such it's tech debt.
      - muspimerol 4y ago
        A workaround does not necessitate tech debt. "Workaround" is a conflated term - it basically implies something works differently than one might expect, which is subjective. Anyway, what is the alternative? Saying "that's not my problem"? Users don't care about who is technically at fault, they care about a well functioning product.
        scarface74 4y ago
        The alternative is to let it break and force developers to update their software. Doing that allowed Apple to not have to maintain 32 bit compatibility which allowed Apple to make the operating system smaller (all shared libraries have to be duplicated including in memory) and allowed Apple to completely remove 32 bit support in the later ARM processors.
        layer8 4y ago
        …and forced me to stop using some favorite iOS apps because they didn’t get updated — in one case because the developer had died. Windows is certainly more user-friendly in that respect.
        scarface74 4y ago
        So Apple should have kept 32 bit support in the chip and processor forever? Libraries being able to consume less memory and being able to either reduce the die size or add more features is a direct consumer benefit.
  - sn_master 4y ago
    It's the difference of an OS targeted exclusively (at the time) for home users vs one for academia and web servers.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    Back then you couldn't just bug the game developer to issue an update patch, and anything significant breaking between Windows versions affects Windows adoption and not the adoption of the software the user is actually interested in. We see the latter even today, with Windows 8 being a failure for how much it changed and broke user workflows and Windows 11 getting a decent bit of pushback too. In a way this realization is what's finally making Linux viable for gaming. Instead of expecting developers to bring compatibility and bug fixes, have the system provide it and suddenly you can even have an entire gaming console designed for PC gaming on Linux, thus also giving you enough momentum for developers to make adjustments so their game runs better on the compatibility layer.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Those who prioritize code correctness over user experience will soon find themselves in that blessed paradise where they never have to worry about user experience anymore... because there are no more users.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    Microsoft made most of its money back then in two ways - corporations and individuals buying Windows upgrades and bundling Windows with new computers. If Windows got a reputation for being incompatible with apps, people wouldn’t upgrade. iOS doesn’t really have that problem. New phones are always going to come with new operating systems and if your app doesn’t run on the new OS, users are going to blame the app developers. Also most of the incompatibility with apps and new operating systems comes from developers using unpublished APIs. Apple is very strict about not allowing developers to use unpublished methods [1]. [1] I refuse to use the term “private APIs”. An API is a documented method that the platform vendor documents and promises to support
- draw_down 4y ago
  Very cool and very swag, but down this road lies nightmares. I respect the dedication to backwards compat but we shouldn’t pretend this kind of thing has no cost.
- eastbound 4y ago
  My astonishment is that Microsoft knew about SimCity. I was 15 in 1995 and I thought the world was so big that Microsoft couldn’t possibly know about the myriad of software that their OS could run. It turns out the world was so small that Microsoft could, probably, inventory less than a hundred products that made 99% users happy.
  - benjaminpv 4y ago
    Raymond Chen talked about how periodically the devs were tasked with getting a handful of software purchased at CompUSA or w/e out of a grocery cart, opening them up, installing them and testing that they worked with the then-unreleased Win95.
    - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
      Move slow and don't break things
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        If you want to make the big bucks, move fast and don’t break things.
      - mavhc 4y ago
        When people don't have the ability to update for very low cost
  - imron 4y ago
    > I thought the world was so big that Microsoft couldn’t possibly know about the myriad of software that their OS could run. At large enough scale, 1 in a million is next Tuesday - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterman/one-in-a-million-is-next-tuesday https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterma...
- coldcode 4y ago
  When I was at Apple in the mid 90's (Before Steve) I remember the Mac OS source code had tons of special app checks, mostly for various Microsoft (also others) apps that did odd things, so that older versions would keep running. When they were working on Copland, I thought it was nuts to write a new OS from scratch, but still do reimplement the hacks so that everything would still run. Good thing it all went away.
  - junofan 4y ago
    They’re still there. IIRC there’s a whole workflow/category in Radar for it.
    - nikanj 4y ago
      Wait, I thought the only workflow supported by radar was ticket filed -> ticket ignored -> product eventually EOL -> ticket closed
      - stormbrew 4y ago
        probably only a 50/50 chance it gets closed tbh. Either way it's in a black hole to the reporter so they'll never know. (I actually liked radar though, as bug trackers go - by far the best internal tool apple has imo)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- inopinatus 4y ago
  The comparison is apt. The multiprotocol thick client platforms we call "web browsers" are easily on par with operating systems in both their complexity, and their mission criticality. LoC has never been a great comparison measure, but I'd anticipate that all current evergreen browsers have more lines of code than Windows 95 did.

simonsarris 4y ago

Thanks for your work, Dale. IMO this was good practice to keep the web running smoothly at the time. It is reminiscent of Windows 95's specific code to see if SimCity is running, and allocate memory differently if it was. > Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here’s the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn’t working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn’t free memory right away. That’s the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95. from: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii-chicken-and-egg-problems/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/05/24/strategy-letter-ii...

tantalor 4y ago
Yeah why fix bugs when you can just enshrine the bug as a feature. Backwards compatibility like this is a mistake.
- siva7 4y ago
  Nowadays yes, back then this was the more reasonable approach
- yusyusyus 4y ago
  software distribution had a quite different model in that era.
- TakeBlaster16 4y ago
  If you play a lot of SimCity on Windows 3.1, then you upgrade to Windows 95 and SimCity stops working, who are you going to blame?
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    I would have more sympathy for that if Windows 95 were just suddenly dropped out of the sky to some rock music, but my experience with MSDN is that they are quite liberal with access to beta versions so software vendors can test their products before the unwashed masses get it And I say this as someone who remembers the binders full of CDROMs that arrived, so not just "download this iso" modern day conveniences
    - rictic 4y ago
      You're arguing who is truly at fault, but as a consumer with less sophistication than "MSDN Subscriber" who are you going to blame when Win95 doesn't run your favorite software?
    - drdec 4y ago
      Let's say SimCity took advantage of this beta program and fixed their buggy software. Great! Now how do you get that fixed software to every user who bought a SimCity CD or floppies? Remember, most of your users don't have a modem and there is no widespread internet infrastructure at the time of the Windows 95 release.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      MSDN ? In windows 95 ?
- ysavir 4y ago
  We're talking early 90s. Not only were automatic updates not a thing, manual updates were hardly thing. If Windows wanted SimCity to work on their new windows release, the only option was to make the new windows release work with SimCity, not the other way around.
  - Topgamer7 4y ago
    I remember the days of burning all sorts of updates for software to cd or DVD
    - tibbetts 4y ago
      I remember the days of going down to my friends store because he had a modem and knew which BBSes would have software downloads. I had to bring my own floppy disk because those things cost money.
  - nix23 4y ago
    But then why not let windows patch simcity, instead of changing the system, just asking.
    - anaisbetts 4y ago
      The hack being described was very very old, this is exactly what the AppCompat system does in Windows now. AppCompat shims only apply to specific versions of specific apps (or get rolled up into "layers" which is what you get when you mark an app to "Run under XP compatibility"), and don't end up affecting other ones
      - nix23 4y ago
        Thanks for then explanation!!
      - markemer 4y ago
        Yep. It’s just the first version of AppCompat. Now you get to pick a set of bugs and behaviors. It’s actually a pretty great idea to isolate problematic software.
- thought_alarm 4y ago
  A-list apps have always received special treatment. MacOS and Windows are both full of app-specific hacks to ensure that misbehaving but popular apps continue to work between system versions.
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Correct. And not even always only A list.
- bigyikes 4y ago
  What you call a “mistake” is actually just having empathy for the user. User experience is king. It’s not tech debt, it’s a feature.
  - tcmb 4y ago
    I agree that it's empathy for the user, but I'd say it's a workaround, and as such it's tech debt.
    - muspimerol 4y ago
      A workaround does not necessitate tech debt. "Workaround" is a conflated term - it basically implies something works differently than one might expect, which is subjective. Anyway, what is the alternative? Saying "that's not my problem"? Users don't care about who is technically at fault, they care about a well functioning product.
      - scarface74 4y ago
        The alternative is to let it break and force developers to update their software. Doing that allowed Apple to not have to maintain 32 bit compatibility which allowed Apple to make the operating system smaller (all shared libraries have to be duplicated including in memory) and allowed Apple to completely remove 32 bit support in the later ARM processors.
        layer8 4y ago
        …and forced me to stop using some favorite iOS apps because they didn’t get updated — in one case because the developer had died. Windows is certainly more user-friendly in that respect.
        scarface74 4y ago
        So Apple should have kept 32 bit support in the chip and processor forever? Libraries being able to consume less memory and being able to either reduce the die size or add more features is a direct consumer benefit.
- sn_master 4y ago
  It's the difference of an OS targeted exclusively (at the time) for home users vs one for academia and web servers.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  Back then you couldn't just bug the game developer to issue an update patch, and anything significant breaking between Windows versions affects Windows adoption and not the adoption of the software the user is actually interested in. We see the latter even today, with Windows 8 being a failure for how much it changed and broke user workflows and Windows 11 getting a decent bit of pushback too. In a way this realization is what's finally making Linux viable for gaming. Instead of expecting developers to bring compatibility and bug fixes, have the system provide it and suddenly you can even have an entire gaming console designed for PC gaming on Linux, thus also giving you enough momentum for developers to make adjustments so their game runs better on the compatibility layer.
- solardev 4y ago
  Those who prioritize code correctness over user experience will soon find themselves in that blessed paradise where they never have to worry about user experience anymore... because there are no more users.
- scarface74 4y ago
  Microsoft made most of its money back then in two ways - corporations and individuals buying Windows upgrades and bundling Windows with new computers. If Windows got a reputation for being incompatible with apps, people wouldn’t upgrade. iOS doesn’t really have that problem. New phones are always going to come with new operating systems and if your app doesn’t run on the new OS, users are going to blame the app developers. Also most of the incompatibility with apps and new operating systems comes from developers using unpublished APIs. Apple is very strict about not allowing developers to use unpublished methods [1]. [1] I refuse to use the term “private APIs”. An API is a documented method that the platform vendor documents and promises to support
draw_down 4y ago
Very cool and very swag, but down this road lies nightmares. I respect the dedication to backwards compat but we shouldn’t pretend this kind of thing has no cost.
eastbound 4y ago
My astonishment is that Microsoft knew about SimCity. I was 15 in 1995 and I thought the world was so big that Microsoft couldn’t possibly know about the myriad of software that their OS could run. It turns out the world was so small that Microsoft could, probably, inventory less than a hundred products that made 99% users happy.
- benjaminpv 4y ago
  Raymond Chen talked about how periodically the devs were tasked with getting a handful of software purchased at CompUSA or w/e out of a grocery cart, opening them up, installing them and testing that they worked with the then-unreleased Win95.
  - SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
    Move slow and don't break things
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      If you want to make the big bucks, move fast and don’t break things.
    - mavhc 4y ago
      When people don't have the ability to update for very low cost
- imron 4y ago
  > I thought the world was so big that Microsoft couldn’t possibly know about the myriad of software that their OS could run. At large enough scale, 1 in a million is next Tuesday - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterman/one-in-a-million-is-next-tuesday https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/larryosterma...
coldcode 4y ago
When I was at Apple in the mid 90's (Before Steve) I remember the Mac OS source code had tons of special app checks, mostly for various Microsoft (also others) apps that did odd things, so that older versions would keep running. When they were working on Copland, I thought it was nuts to write a new OS from scratch, but still do reimplement the hacks so that everything would still run. Good thing it all went away.
- junofan 4y ago
  They’re still there. IIRC there’s a whole workflow/category in Radar for it.
  - nikanj 4y ago
    Wait, I thought the only workflow supported by radar was ticket filed -> ticket ignored -> product eventually EOL -> ticket closed
    - stormbrew 4y ago
      probably only a 50/50 chance it gets closed tbh. Either way it's in a black hole to the reporter so they'll never know. (I actually liked radar though, as bug trackers go - by far the best internal tool apple has imo)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
inopinatus 4y ago
The comparison is apt. The multiprotocol thick client platforms we call "web browsers" are easily on par with operating systems in both their complexity, and their mission criticality. LoC has never been a great comparison measure, but I'd anticipate that all current evergreen browsers have more lines of code than Windows 95 did.